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There are times when I feel like everything is okay and just as it should be in the world, at least in my little corner of it. They are few and far between.

When I step into the shower with my head lowered, the world disappears. The warm water slowly starts to saturate the hairs on the back of my neck. They seem like they can hold an illogical amount of moisture but for a moment I do not think to myself of how many months have passed of me telling myself that I should visit the barber soon. My dry palms are folded in a prayer over my aging face like I am jumping off the high dive, yet afraid to do anything but lean back and try not too much swallow water.  The water swelling on my neck breaks into cords, flowing around my neck and then throat.  They feel symmetrical and perfect. My DNA seems to resonate with the echo of the shower walls. For a moment I am not afraid. The water starts to pool into swirling eddies on my palms and shortens my breath. I am not overwhelmed. I do not feel like I am drowning. This may just be as close as I come to meditation. The dry taste in my mouth reminds me that I desperately need the attention of an oral surgeon. It is not just an extraction. I moved past that. I ignored the pain. I ignored the repeated infection. I ignored the red flags and the kindness of strangers. The same strangers that told me infections will migrate to my brain and kill me. The doctor explained the black void in the x-ray while the student watched in shock.  They are the people who told me that you cannot survive like this, living in complete darkness. I think I am alone at the bottom of an ocean and breathing the chemicals of hydrothermal vents. There is a moment that I am not showered. There is a moment when I do not need to be clean. The weight of the water saturating my neck and the lack of available oxygen urges me to face the waves of water coming from the outlet. I unclasp my hands and it feels like I am dropping ever tear that I have ever cried onto my feet and the floor. They break like every glass object that has ever been thrown at my fee, but no one ends up with scars. I don’t need any more reminders or alarms. I wake up effortlessly. For a moment it is not Halloween and I am sure my son knows how much I love him. The quality and quantity of the time I spend with him is immeasurable and complete. I feel whole and secure with the example I am being to him.  His mother is not ashamed of me and her new boyfriend does not seem so perfect. Her family does not despise me for disappearing  and I did not make a complete mess of young love by being maladjusted to life. No one needs masks. Everyone is okay with my real face and I do not feel ashamed, overwhelmed and crippled by my child support payments that remain unpaid each month. Not unpaid because of the fact that they are set at $7,206 a year and my current income is around $17,000 a year but unpaid because I am afraid of everything and everyone. I am afraid this penance is less debilitating than I deserve, that I deserve to live down here because I can. I can live off of about $450 a month because I learned how. It makes me the unhappiest I think I have ever been just outside this water.  It is dark because I turned off the light. I want to turn the bathroom light off and do not, because I do not want to wet the floor. Most importantly I stand still because I know that if I move I will just dry off and leave. I am afraid of comfort.  I am not afraid right now, though. I am comfortable.  Right now I am wet. It is all I need to be. Wet and still. I am staring into a storm. It is combing my hair for me. It is playing the music but I do not know what to do with my hands. At the moment I am not thinking of what my hands are doing. Nothing is moving except the sea and the moon. Now I am weightless. I am not worried about my mother’s weight or her health. Not worried with the fact that I know she has lived in this condition or worse for so many years that sometimes she just scratches her hairline and stares at a screen until her hair comes out along the hairline. Inside this envelope of tears and soap I have insurance. I have a therapist that I trust. The medications aren’t seizure medications that make my vision roll and teeth chatter. Doctors do not swear by words like co-efficacy and I do not feel like anything is a shill.   Is it nature or nurture? How do you spell happiness and when I try to record these thoughts, will my grammar be anywhere near correct? I have a stunted knowledge of basic sentence structure.  If I did not bring the soap or a wash cloth I would be embarrassed. In the shower I am the only one that knows I wash with a cloth. Here I am the only one who tells me that fact somehow indicates that my upbringing involved poverty. I do not understand that concept, even outside the shower. I tell myself I am not ill. I tell myself I am already clean and that soon I will go to the DMV and at least try to see how much money I need to pay to try and regain my license. I notice the water could be warmer and I haven’t even really washed my hair. All of the sudden I am there. I am here. I am outside the shower writing on the insides of my skull like a cave dweller. I am at the DMV. I am already standing in line. It has already taken three hours of bus and bike rides to travel the distance of a fifteen minute ride in a car. It has only taken seventeen minutes to get my hair wet. I am behind already. By the time I am dry I am afraid. I do not know if I can accomplish more than getting in bed and not crying. I want to chain smoke and watch a movie. I should have never taken a shower. I wish I had an answer. Just one simple answer, for any of this mess that piles up outside the shower. I wish anything felt as easy as loving my son. I want out. I am exhausted. I need a nap…and a towel.